Please Pray for Fr. Rob Johansen

Urgent prayer request for Fr. Rob Johansen, a longtime blogger at Thrown Back, who has suffered a heart attack. (Heard from Mark Shea by way of Domenico Bettinelli.)

False alarm? -- I'm pleased to report that Fr. Rob is alive and well..

To Vote . . . Or Not to Vote?

Abortion Ruling Is All About Alito. Pro Ecclesia Friday, April 20, 2007. Jay makes a good point here:

Andrew Cohen laments at The Washington Post:

This is why presidential elections matter even if and when you don't particularly like one candidate or the other. The re-election of George W. Bush in 2004 begat the nomination to the United States Supreme Court of Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. and Justice Alito's ascencion to the High Court last year begat today a landmark abortion ruling that anti-abortion advocates have pushed to get for years. You can spin this any other way you want but in the end it comes down to a simple matter of personnel. Justice Alito was willing and able to go in the law where his predecessor, former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wasn't. And, as a result, doctors in this country now may be sent to federal prison for performing a type of abortion procedure even if those doctors believe that a woman's health would be jeopardized by not having the procedure. As the late, great Kurt Vonnegut might have said: so it goes.

To which Jay comments:

Let me repeat and emphasize the one thing on which I agree with Cohen: "This is why presidential elections matter even if and when you don't particularly like one candidate or the other."

Back in 2004, the Catholic philosopher Alisdair Macintyre expressed the opinion that The Only Vote Worth Casting in November was . . . no vote at all:

. . . the only vote worth casting in November is a vote that no one will be able to cast, a vote against a system that presents one with a choice between Bush's conservatism and Kerry's liberalism, those two partners in ideological debate, both of whom need the other as a target.

Why should we reject both? Not primarily because they give us wrong answers, but because they answer the wrong questions. What then are the right political questions? One of them is: What do we owe our children? And the answer is that we owe them the best chance that we can give them of protection and fostering from the moment of conception onwards. And we can only achieve that if we give them the best chance that we can both of a flourishing family life, in which the work of their parents is fairly and adequately rewarded, and of an education which will enable them to flourish.

Other Catholics have expressed similar dissatisfaction with the present administration and the GOP in general. Last November, Catholic apologist and fellow blogger Mark Shea wrote dismissively of the choice in the mid-term elections as one between "Tweedledee and Tweedledum", and voted for a third-party candidate, so as to express his dissatisfaction with what he habitually refers to as "the torture party" or "the Stupid Party" (who he presumes operates under the motto: "We Exploit Pro-lifers Every Four Years by Pretending to Care about Human Life").

There is an element of truth to Mark's criticism of the GOP. After all, Hadley Arkes had his own bone to pick with the Bush Administration shortly after the 2004 election, characterizing the outcome as "Bush's Second Chance" (First Things April 2005). At the same time, I think that a blanket condemnation of the GOP such as made by Shea -- even in jest -- does a disservice to the many Catholic (or Protestant) Republicans who do work tirelessly to pass pro-life legislation. (I see that I'm not the only one noticing the bitterness and cynicism emanating from Catholic & Enjoying It these days).

Honestly, if this post sounds conflicted, it's because I am. There's a lot of discussion lately about a crisis of identity within the GOP -- the candidacy of "pro-choice Catholic" Rudy Giuliani being a present symptom. And I think we would be in something of a predicament were Giuliani to actually be the presidential nominee. Were that to happen, do you make the attempt to save the GOP by working from within? Or do you "opt out" and resign yourself to criticizing from afar?

Which would have the better chance of reforming the party or doing some good in the long term?

Like my colleagues, the prospect of a Giuliani presidential nomination is a fearful one. But I also have strong difficulties with the decision to abstain from voting, or to cast a principled-but-ultimately-ineffective vote for a third-party candidate which no clear chance of electoral victory. I would be greatly concerned were religious conservatives to embark on a "protest vote" en masse, because in either case, the outcome is the same: one hands over the victory to the Democrats, and those who are arguably more likely to do greater damage, rolling back any legislative pro-life gains made by Republicans. Consider:

• According to the Washington Post, crisis pregnancy centers have received 60 million in federal funding since 2001 ("Altogether, local antiabortion and crisis pregnancy centers have received well over $60 million in grants for abstinence education and other programs" "Grants Flow To Bush Allies On Social Issues" March 22, 2006. One knows what would have happened under a Kerry presidency -- and one can reasonably predict what would occur under Hillary Clinton or Obama.
  

• Consider also the heavily contested the Mexico City Policy instituted by President Reagan, requiring "nongovernmental organizations to agree as a condition of their receipt of [U.S.] federal funds that such organizations would neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations." The policy was repealed by President Clinton on his first day of office, and then reinstated January 22, 2001, by president George W. Bush. Senator Kerry in turn vowed to revoke it, were he elected president. Again, whoever is elected to the presidency, his action would likely adhere to the example set forth by his party.
  

• Consider what might have happened had Christians, despite their concerns about the Bush administration, embraced a position of non-engagement and "opted out" of the election in 2004 . . . and those Supreme Court judges appointed by President Bush were intead appointed by a certain "pro-choice Catholic" senator from Massachusetts? -- Would we have anything to celebrate this past week?
  

Food for thought and discussion.

New Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought

The new Encylopedia of Catholic Social Thought will go on sale on or about July 15, 2007. It is a publication faithful to the magisterium and will be of great interest to all, Catholic or non-Catholic. Among the co-editors, you will find a law professor at Ave Maria Law School in Ann Arbor and a political science professor from Franciscan University in Steubenville. The publication is a project of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, of which I am a member. I was also fortunate to have the chance to contribute several articles to the encyclopedia. It was a pleasure to work with the co-editors. As a reference work, the price is hefty--so consider asking your local public, college, seminary, or parish libraries to make the purchase. It's a timely publishing date, given the upcoming 2008 presidential election and the recent pro-life victory at the U.S. Supreme Court. Here is the link to the sales site.

Bush Appointees Key to Upholding Partial Birth Abortion Ban

Yesterday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court announced a 5-4 victory for pro-life forces that endangers Roe v. Wade. The victory upholds the ban on partial birth abortion signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003. Here are the five justices voting to uphold the ban: Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Sam Alito, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Justice Anthony Kennedy. The losers, this time, were these four: Justices Breyer, Souter, Stevens, and Ginsburg. Here is the link to the AP story. There will be a lot of chest-thumping Bush fans today among pro-life Catholics and other pro-life Christians. I, for one, have never flagged in my support of George W. Bush, in spite of the firestorm over the Iraq war. Thanks, President Bush, for keeping your campaign promises to appoint pro-life justices like John Roberts and Sam Alito.

Catholics in Public Life: Judges, Legislators, and Voters

From Fidelis:

Greg Kalscheur, SJ, has wrtten an excellent paper entitled "Catholics in Public Life: Judges, Legislators, and Voters."

The essay focuses on how a judge who is a faithful Catholic can function in a a constitutional system where cases before the judge contain issues which the Church addresses through its teachings in the Magisterium.

Click here to access the document and then click on "Download Document" in the upper left hand side of the website you access.